I was recently part of a roundtable discussion with journalists, union members, high-up politicians, and more, to explore the increasingly-precarious state of modern media, with regards to the work of freelancers and how they’re paid. Or not, as is the case bleakly often.

Predictably, and unavoidably, the discussion quickly turned to AI, and its increasing omnipresence in the media world, which often involves it ‘taking’ the work of others, often the barely-getting-by freelancers just mentioned, for zero compensation, and regurgitating different variations of it, that are increasingly used as copy for news platforms etc., thus denying freelancers and contributors the opportunity to earn a living twice over.

It’s not great. Hopefully something will be done about it. And soon.

But as I was on the train to the meeting, I saw a post which encapsulates the whole issue perfectly. It was about this story for The New York Times. And here is how it was presented online (on BlueSky, in this instance).

So, let’s break this down. Not even line by line, but word by word.

“Breaking News” means that this story is deemed to be so important that it warrants being published and promoted right away, ahead of the pre-planned output. Big media platforms tend to schedule what they publish quite carefully, so one must assume THE NEW YORK TIMES, one of if not the most prestigious newspaper there is, finds this story to be of crucial important. Is it? Let’s keep going and find out.

“…:Meta…”, the Zuckerberg-owned tech company. I’ve made it clear how I feel about them, more than once.

“…is said”, …so this isn’t a definite thing? Not a press release or official statement? It’s just a rumour?1

“…to be preparing…” So, they haven’t actually done the thing that it’s rumoured they’re doing? Not yet, at any rate.

“…to unveil…” OK, so this isn’t a rumour about a tech company making preparations to do something. It’s a rumour about a tech company making preparations to show us something. Or just announce it. I’d always assumed that to be deemed ‘news’, something had to actually happen. But according to this, that’s wrong, because all this seems many steps removed from an actual event taking place.

“…an AI lab dedicated to a hypothetical system…” Good lord. So on top of everything else, the thing at the centre of all this very-tenuous news doesn’t actually exist, and may never do?

“…that exceeds the powers of the human brain”. …we’ll get back to this in a moment.

So, in summary, what we have here is a rumour about possible preparation, to announce an effort to develop a system that doesn’t and maybe cannot exist, with capabilities that exceed some arbitrary benchmark.

Exactly how this counts as news at all, let alone ‘breaking’ news, is hard to explain. Unless they mean “this story is so insubstantial it literally breaks the concept of news”? Points for honesty if so, I guess.

But this is what we’re up against. One of the most powerful tech companies on Earth might do something with AI, and one of the most influential media platforms drops everything to tell the world about it. Presumably resulting in a leap in stock prices for the former and a healthy blast of traffic and ad revenue or whatever for the latter. All without anyone having actually done anything of substance.

What exactly is a lowly freelancer meant to do in the face of all that?

Well, we persevere! Because what else is there.

And this freelancer is here to take issue with one aspect in particular; the notion that this purely theoretical AI would be ‘more powerful than the human brain’.

Because, unnerving as it may sound, it’s pure propaganda and bluster. It’s one of those phrases that sounds intimidatingly impressive when you first hear it, but upon looking closer, you realise it doesn’t mean anything at all. And also, not anywhere near as significant as it seems. It’s like when people say something is a ‘quantum leap’ forward, relying on the fact that this is arguably the smallest possible movement in the known universe.

Basically, to suggest that you’ll develop an AI ‘more powerful’ than the human brain is simultaneously impossible to clarify, and functionally meaningless.

And, from certain perspectives, it’s not even an achievement!

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How powerful is the brain, actually?

Point is, how ‘powerful’ is the human brain? Because it’s not an especially specific term.

For instance, power is often described as the ‘rate at which energy is transferred or consumed’, measured in watts. And the human brain tends to do all it needs to do on 20 watts of power. The typical AI system (or ‘Large Language Model’, LLM, to be more precise) requires orders of magnitude more power than that, just to function.

So, technically, just by existing at all, any working AI programme is already more ‘powerful’ than the human brain.

Presumably, this isn’t what Meta or The New York Times actually means. But it does give them an ‘out’, if anyone wants to question this ‘more powerful than the brain’ claim.

One would assume they actually mean this theoretical AI could ‘do more stuff’, or be ‘smarter’ than the standard human brain. However, this is also objectively meaningless.

Like I’ve said before, quantifying how intelligent or ‘smart’ someone, and thereby their brain, is, that’s already a very slippery and uncertain process. But in terms of raw numbers, it could be said that the human brain isn’t that powerful at all.

When it comes to handling and manipulating raw data, it’s believed that our working memory, the brain process which does just that, can hold around 4 items at once. Meanwhile, I’m no tech expert, but if an AI is trained with, and can respond by drawing on, all the available works on the web (even those they don’t have permission to use) then it logically must have a capacity far in excess of ‘four bits of information’.

By that logic, any computational device is more powerful than the human brain. Indeed, this article is more powerful than the human brain (hence the title). It can clearly hold thousands of words in a specific sequence, for an indefinite period. And I can refresh it as much as I like, it’ll recall them all perfectly. Find me a brain that can do that from the get go, without spending many hours learning and reciting the text at length. Evidence shows that human memory is mostly about generalities or the ‘gist’ of events, unless it’s something incredibly stimulating (i.e. traumatising) or extensively rehearsed.

Imagery, too. If you asked the typical human brain to recreate an image of, say, a cheeseburger, it could remember or figure out what one looks like, but it would struggle to recreate that image with 100% accuracy. It’d be some vague, muddy representation that would be difficult to recreate in a tangible sense.

Meanwhile, look!

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There, a perfect representation of a cheeseburger, right down to the reflection of the light on the shiny processed cheese slice. See, this article is indeed much more powerful than a human brain, let alone an advanced AI.

You might be saying “But that’s not what they mean!” And you’re probably right. But that’s the problem; we can’t say with any certainty what they do mean, because they haven’t clarified anything. It’s just a bold, impressive sounding claim which can mean whatever you want it to, if you’re so minded.

Do they mean they’ll create an AI that’s more intelligent than a human brain? If so, in what way? If it can manipulate more data at once, then that’s easy. Most modern computers do that.

If they mean it’ll operate faster than the human brain, well, yeah. It would be weird if it didn’t. The maximum speed of transmission of information in brain cells is about half the speed of sound. In modern electrical computing devices, it’s a good chunk of lightspeed. The latter is slightly faster than the other, shall we say. That’s part of the reason why pocket calculators became so popular in the first place. We could do the mental arithmetic required if we put our minds to it, but it’s so much quicker to let the gadget put the legwork in.

If they mean they want to make an AI more efficient than the human brain, then… great! That 20 watts of power I mentioned just now? The human brain uses that to perform trillions of calculations. If Meta want to create an AI that can do everything an AI is meant to do with all the power requirements of an old-school light bulb, then more power to them (ironically).

If they mean they want to create an AI that can somehow combine all the myriad data processing functions they perform into a unified consciousness that is self-aware and capable of self-adjustment, learning, and deduction, without external modifications or input… cool, I guess? But they really should let us know how they did that if they manage it, because this is a function of the human brain that we’re still a long way from figuring out.

The point is, there are so many things even a basic technological or software construct can do that the human brain cannot. And there are just as many things that the human brain can do that even the most advanced technology cannot begin to match. Saying one is more ‘powerful’ than the other is ultimately meaningless.

It’s like saying Mario Kart is a better game than Chess, because it has better graphics. In some ways, Mario Kart is a better game than Chess. In others, it isn’t. But chess doesn’t even have graphics! So this comparison makes no sense.

I get that it’s hyperbole and hype. But hype based on, that relies on, ignorance, is not hype I can ever condone.

Why not make your own brain more ‘powerful’ by buying one of, or several, of my books. They are well good.

There’s something about Greta Thunberg that provokes hot-blooded fury among a certain demographic. The rage the 22-year-old activist from Stockholm regularly incurs is on a similar level to that often incited by the Montecito-based Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle. The latest act which the founder of Skolstrejk för Kilmatet (“Fridays for Future”) has undertaken was boarding a vessel chartered by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which attempted to transport humanitarian aid to Gaza through the current partial Israeli blockade. On Monday, the boat carrying Thunberg and other activists was intercepted by Israeli forces who boarded the vessel before accompanying it back to shore. The Israeli government has since deported Thunberg.

Various predictable charges have been hurled at Thunberg (who guest-edited this magazine in 2022). Enraged critics have said that her participation was just a publicity-stunt or that she put herself in needless danger just to make a point. The Israeli foreign ministry nicknamed the British-flagged Madleen Yacht, which carried Thunberg and 12 others across the sea from Sicily, the “selfie-yacht” when announcing that it had been seized. One article in the New York Post accused Thunberg of pretending to be in handcuffs after arriving in France following her deportation. Countless posts on X have mocked Thunberg, or have called her “self-righteous”, with one post going so far as to call her a “useful idiot”. Google searches for ‘Greta Thunberg’ peaked at 6am on 9 June, reaching the top of Google Trends maximum searches. 

What all of the vitriol fails to acknowledge is that this attention is the result Thunberg’s actions were intended to attract. She is, after all, an activist. One wonders how those spitting with fury over what they deem to be Thunberg’s “irresponsible” publicity stunt would have said about the resistance — armed and otherwise — used by anti-apartheid campaigners in South Africa under the leadership of the now-beloved Nelson Mandela.

One imagines many of the same people who are probably furiously rage-posting about Thunberg on X are doing so from a home bedecked with kitschy posters bearing slogans such as “It Always Seems Impossible Until It Is Done” (a phrase made popular by Mandela) or “Be the Change you Want to See in the World”, often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi certainly didn’t make his name by keeping quiet – he devoted his life to peaceful civil disobedience in order to secure India’s independence. In other words, he spent much of his life pissing people off. That is what activism is.

And what to make of the charge against Thunberg that by boarding the flotilla, she was irresponsibly and needlessly putting her life in danger? Has everyone forgotten the Suffragettes? Emily Davidson stepped out in front of the King’s horse at the 1913 Epsom Derby, killing herself and seriously injuring a jockey, with the aim of securing universal suffrage (Votes for Women!). This scene is now celebrated and Davidson is honoured; children are taught about it in school. Davidson’s activism was dangerous and daring (and could have caused more injuries besides) but it achieved its desired result.

Thunberg’s journey on the Madleen, though perhaps personally reckless, has succeeded in keeping the desperate need for aid in Gaza at the top of the news agenda. An eleven-week blockade in the region, which was partially lifted by the Israeli government at the end of May, has left vulnerable Palestinian children and families starving. As of 4 June, 57,000 people have died in this war. That more outrage has been expressed online over a 22-year-old Swedish woman attempting to help those who are suffering is a damning indictment of where we are.

The world’s best-known campaigner has never hidden who she is or what she believes in. Yet she will always be a clueless teenager in the eyes of her detractors; someone to be seen, not heard. But Greta Thunberg has other ideas, and she won’t go quietly. She is, after all, an activist.

When the thugs arrive — the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan — who stands up to them? That’s a question raised by Rutger Bregman in his new book, Moral Ambition. Bregman, who is Dutch, was fascinated by the example of Nieuwlande, a tiny Dutch town whose residents concealed almost 100 Jews from the Nazi occupiers. “The concentration of people in hiding was higher than nearly everywhere else in Europe.”

So what made the citizens of Nieuwlande courageous? Psychologists have examined the determinants of such heroism. One influential study was conducted by Pearl and Samuel Oliner, authors of The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe and founders of the Altruistic Personality Institute. The Oliners interviewed hundreds of people who had protected Jews in Europe during the second world war. One can understand Sam Oliner’s interest in the topic: he was Jewish, born in Poland in 1930, lost his entire family and, at the age of 12, was hidden from his would-be murderers by a sympathetic Catholic peasant.

A similar project was conducted by psychologist Eva Fogelman, author of Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. And yet, says Bregman, these studies of heroic acts don’t find many indicators of a heroic personality type.

“A resistance hero could be shy or self-assured, silly or serious, young or old, pious or scandalous, rich or poor, leftwing or right,” writes Bregman. There were some predictive factors, such as independence of spirit. But the heroes seemed much the same as anyone else. The only obvious distinction was the vital one: they took extraordinary risks to save others, while others did nothing.

A later analysis by sociologists Federico Varese and Meir Yaish focused on a different set of explanations. What if, rather than a matter of personality, courageous altruism was a matter of circumstance? And there was one circumstance in particular that stood out in the data: people who were asked to help almost never refused. The secret to being a hero? It was to have someone standing in front of you, demanding heroism.

In Nieuwlande, that person was often Arnold Douwes or his friend Max Léons, a two-man resistance army. On one occasion, Arnold and Max dropped in for coffee with a farmer and his wife, and soon raised the question: would they hide a pair of Jews from the Nazis?

As the farmer started to protest, Max breezily announced, “They’re man and wife — very sweet people . . . just a moment, I’ll go get them.” A moment later, they appeared. Max and Arnold stood up, “So, that’s settled. Good night!”

How rude. How presumptuous. But the Jewish couple survived.

Of course it is not a surprise to observe that people are influenced by the requests of other people. Social behaviour is often contagious. In March 2013, millions of Facebook users changed their profile picture to an equals sign as a signal of support for equality in marriage rights between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Various factors predicted whether people would do this, but a key variable was simply that people were more likely to switch after several of their friends switched.

Switching your profile picture is a low-risk, low-consequence show of support for a cause. It’s not in the same category as defying the SS by hiding someone in your house. Back in the 1980s, the sociologist Doug McAdam drew a distinction between high-risk and low-risk activism, and argued that his fellow sociologists had been all too willing to ignore that distinction.

McAdam studied the Freedom Summer project of 1964, in which unpaid volunteers, mostly white, travelled to the American Deep South to help register Black voters and support other civil rights causes. Several of them were murdered and many of them experienced intimidation or serious violence. Like those who sheltered Jews from the Nazis, these were people voluntarily running mortal risks. Hundreds persisted, but hundreds of others, understandably, dropped out. What distinguished these two groups was not commitment to the cause — they were all committed — but close personal connections to other volunteers. It’s harder to quit, and easier to be brave, if you’re with friends.

In 1986, McAdam couldn’t draw a distinction between friends and “friends”, the people who follow each other on Facebook, Instagram or Strava. But the difference is real. In a 2010 New Yorker essay that predates our current anxiety about smartphones and social media, Malcolm Gladwell argued that the weak-tie networks of social media might be great for raising awareness and signalling support, but not so great for motivating truly brave and committed action.

“The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members,” wrote Gladwell, “who have donated an average of nine cents apiece.”

A few weeks ago, I argued that it wasn’t healthy to spend too much time thinking about Donald Trump, or, to borrow a phrase from Oliver Burkeman, to “live inside the news”. There is a risk that this seems like a recommendation to be selfish: to emulate Erik Hagerman, who lived on an Ohio pig farm and deliberately avoided the news, even donning headphones when visiting a café to avoid encountering anyone talking about politics. After Hagerman was profiled in The New York Times, he was called “the most selfish person in America”.

But Burkeman has more sympathy for Hagerman, who was reported to be spending much of his time and his savings restoring an area of wetlands for public enjoyment. He might not be risking his life, but he was solving an actual problem. It’s just possible that might be more significant than changing a Facebook profile picture.

Hagerman scandalised online opinion by cutting himself off from the news. But what truly seems to motivate the bravest, most altruistic behaviour is not a connection to the news. It’s a connection to other people.

Written for and first published in the Financial Times on 16 May 2025.

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Any film where cast members talk about chosen family and Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson busts a cast off his broken arm by flexing his biceps has a place in the gay canon

I am a 42-year-old lesbian who can’t drive. And, since I’m baring all, I will add that I loathe people who drive extremely fast in obnoxiously large cars. Which, unfortunately, seems to be every third person in the US. In short, I’d wager I’m probably not the target audience for the Fast & Furious films.

I’m sure I don’t need to explain the blockbuster franchise to you: the first instalment came out in 2001 and the series has generated billions. But if you are somehow unfamiliar with them, the basic premise is that a ragtag team of misfits and street racers travel around the world, driving cars fast and furiously, beating up baddies.

A coalition of 10 Tesla owners in France is suing the American electric vehicle company over CEO Elon Musk’s former role in the White House and support of the far right in Europe.

“They don’t want to be associated anymore with Tesla or personified by Elon Musk and his recent political stances,” said Ivan Terel, a partner for GKA, a Paris law firm representing the owners.

Tesla sales plummeted across Europe after Musk spoke at a rally for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in January, telling the crowd it was time for Germany to “move on” from its Nazi past, which sparked calls to boycott the EV brand.

In France alone, Tesla sales declined 67 percent in May compared to the same month in 2024, according to data from the country’s PFA registrar. The impact isn’t limited to boycotts, though, with vandals targeting dealerships and individual Tesla drivers finding their cars damaged.

Several of Terel’s clients are among those whose vehicles were vandalized, with one discovering a swastika painted on the side and another finding it defecated on, he said.

GKA filed the suit in the Paris Commercial Court on Wednesday, seeking to have the vehicle leases voided and for its clients to be repaid the original cost of ownership, plus other damages.

The lawsuit uses an article from the French civil code that states the seller of an item must “guarantee clients a peaceful use of the goods sold,” Terel said, calling it an old law that is being used in unprecedented circumstances due to Musk’s role in the White House.

Musk was a key ally of U.S. President Donald Trump in the first 100 days of his second administration, leading the American government’s drive to slash federal spending. But the relationship between the two tycoons quickly soured, leaving Musk out in the cold.

A commercial court judge will decide if the case has merit and whether others can join the lawsuit in the interim. Several other Tesla owners have inquired about the case since GKA filed suit, according to Terel.

In letter to Netanyahu, 41 signatories say hostages given ‘death sentence’ and Israel waging ‘unnecessary’ war

Israel’s government is issuing “clearly illegal” orders that must not be obeyed, a group of Israeli military intelligence officers have said, announcing they will no longer participate in combat operations in Gaza.

In a letter addressed to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the defence minister, Israel Katz, and the head of the military, the group of 41 officers and reservists said the government was waging an “unnecessary, eternal war” in Gaza.